Enough is enough (Västervik)

It was a day of many beginnings and endings. I got up delighted by the slowly dawning realisation that indeed, it was not raining anymore. This, with the (almost forgotten) sensation of sunlight on my skin made the morning blissfully sweet.

At this point, I was still under the illusion that I could cover about half the remaining distance (200km) to Kalmar today, so I had to get going. But no matter how efficient I tried to be, it still took me a looong time to have breakfast,get packed and do the necessary shopping in Valdemarsvik, so that by the time I rode out of town it was getting close to noon. Not overly bothered by this (the days are long with enough light for cycling up to about 9pm), I decided to try and avoid the busy E22 as much as possible, by following the smaller roads all running more or less to the right direction. Or so I thought.

It did not take me long to realise, though, that either a) something dramatic must have happened to my map reading capacities (that so far have seen me through some pretty tricky routes), b)my maps are still not quite what they should be, or c) my concentration is at its all-time lowest, for I ended up spending a great part of the day not really knowing where I was on the map. More importantly, I was often not at all confident that the road I happened to be on would take me anywhere where I intended to go! This, coupled with the Very hilly terrain (don't know where i had got the idea that southern Sweden was flat?) meant that I was constantly having to scale another steep uphill, only to plunge into another hair-raising downhill...all the time hoping this indeed was the road I thought it was. Sometimes it was, but several times today I had to admit to myself that I had once again missed a turnoff. If only the place names posted in the crossroads could correspond to those shown on the map!

I was still not worried, however, and the lovely weather contributed to my nonchalance. Somehow it just did not seem so crucial to cover a certain number of km's on the first real spring day, with swallows darting all around me and the meadows bursting with flowers and fresh grass.

As was to be expected, my progress in terms of approaching Kalmar was negligible, and by 3 pm I had only managed to cover a stretch that on the main road would have corresponded to 15km! Grudgingly, I acknowledged that staying on E22 might not be such a bad idea after all, and managed to cover some ground before forking off it again in Gamleby. For a while, all was going well, and the beautiful views and no traffic to speak of made me congratulate myself for the route selection... And there I did it again: One moment, I knew where I was, and the next, I was only guessing.

This time, however, was different, as the weather had now changed again and the first showers had already forced me into my gore tex/plastic bag outfit. In addition, I was deep inside a big forest on obviously little-used gravel roads, and although I knew I could always just pitch my tent wherever and wait until morning for the weather to clear, somehow the thought of staying somewhere in the middle of a forest with no-one (including myself!) knowing my whereabouts was not an appealing prospect!

Still, when I finally got back to the main road (and not where I had wanted to be either), what did I do? Stubbornly, refusing to believe there really wasn't a secondary road to tale I decided to follow a track that SEEMED to be going to the same direction. Quite predictably, it soon began to bend away from the E22, but as I could still hear the traffic I decided to stick to it as it would surely come back to the main road at some point. (In case you are wondering, no, it was not marked on the map to do so, but as it really was a small track, I decided it may have been omitted alltogether.) When a couple of km later it ended in some farm house's front yard, I should have admitted my defeat and turned back. Instead, happy about the ease of conversing with the locals in their mother tongue (a big bonus compared to my experiences last year, in Poland for example), I asked a lady if there was any way of getting back to E22 without turning back. She said yes, I only had to follow the path (by now, that was all it was) through the forest for about 600 m, then turn right at a green house,and that would take me to the main road. Great, I thought, "a little bit of all-terrain biking was all that was missing", and off i went, tyres splashing through mud in the almost invisible forest path. Despite the long day weighing in my legs, I felt elated by this turn of events, and the sight of the promised green house made me all giddy in the head. What an adventure, and all just because I had refused to accept that there wasn't a way!

It was only after passing the green house when something made me look again at my surroundings. Hadn't I seen that house, that fence, that van before? Indeed, I had managed to make a full circle, ending up a few hundred m's before the place where I had wanted to avoid going on the E22!!

I just laughed. By now, it was evident that any dreams about Kalmar tomorrow night would have to be buried, so I may as well take things as they came. So I got on to the main road and rode on it until the turnoff to Västervik. At this point, there was still a flicker of hope I could make it to the next camsite about 25 km further on,but when the drizzle picked up force and became a veritable downpour I gave in and decided to settle for the nearest campsite. However, by the time I was in Västervik city centre looking for signposting for the campsite, I was well and thoroughly soaked. So much for the supposedly water-proof biking gear that the staff at Velo Sport had 'not managed to get wet' when I made a complaint after last year's similar experiences!

So, what did I do? I simply decided that enough is enough, and I had done my part of putting up with (mostly self-inflicted) physical hardships for one day. I checked into a hotel, had a pizza and a nice hot shower. Playing the Superwoman can wait for another day, today I have given all I got.